50 Marketing Blogs You Should Read Every Day

01 Apr 2014

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You know that feeling you get when you find a new blog that is just loaded with good information? Get ready to have that feeling 50 times in row.

Marketers need good resources to make good decisions. And to be quite frank, there is a lot of junk out there. We spend a lot of time reading marketing blogs to stay in the know about the latest and greatest. If you want to know exactly what Chris Hexton and I read, you’ve come to the right place. This is exactly what you will find in our RSS readers.

Buffer has become the startup standard-bearer when it comes to blogging. They have built a community around their company culture and smart content. As a result, the blog has grown to more than 700,000 monthly readers.

But that’s not all. Buffer is unique in that their culture is their marketing strategy. To Buffer, this means openness and transparency. On the Buffer Open blog, you can see employee salaries, conversion rates, revenue growth and traffic statistics. All content is marketing, and Buffer proves it with this blog.

Joel Klettke is a quick-witted, talented freelance writer from Alberta, Canada. After spending a few years as an agency-side SEO, Klettke left his job to start Business Casual Copywriting. His work can often be found on the iAcquire blog, and his humor can always be found on Twitter.

Joe Pulizzi has built a powerhouse of a blog. The Content Marketing Institute site is a massive marketing resource, complete with online training, e-books and original research. If you are new to the site, start here.

You’d expect content marketing companies to run really good blogs, right? That’s not always the case, but Contently practices what it preaches on The Content Strategist. Dive in to learn how big brands are finally capitalizing on content and publishers are evolving in the digital age.

Content marketing is only the beginning. Without readers that convert into leads and customers, it’s all for naught. That’s where ConversionalXL comes in handy. Check it out to learn the ins and outs of generating leads and sales.

Jay Baer started Convince & Convert six years ago to provide strategic marketing advice to businesses. Since then, the blog has covered just about every marketing topic under the sun, with new posts coming nearly every day.

Brian Clark has built a multimillion dollar technology company with the Copyblogger blog. He is essentially selling pickaxes – hosting, WordPress plugins, education, etc. – during a gold rush. The business model and the blog are both worth paying attention to.

Writing copy is quite a bit different than churning out blog posts. Copy is designed to not only educate but also convert. Joanna Wiebe and Lance Jones walk you through everything a good copywriter needs to know to be successful.

Crazy Egg’s heat maps and click-tracking overlays are incredibly useful. It turns out their blog, The Daily Egg, is also a great resource. While the tools are designed to provide data, the blog offers training, tips and insight on conversion and engagement.

In addition to publishing original content on its blog, the team at the Email Institute also curates great posts from around the Web. Also, check out the LinkedIn group, which hosts active discussions for its more than 1,000 members.

While Growth Hackers isn’t technically a blog – it’s a community – it is a fantastic resource for marketers. Users can submit and vote on content, meaning the best and most interesting stuff is always at the top.

Groove is an incredibly cool customer support startup founded by Alex Turnbull. Alex also runs the blog, where he publishes detailed posts about startup life, marketing, growth hacking and details about their revenue growth.

Freelancing has become an industry of its own. Now that people can work anywhere, anytime, companies looking to invest in content marketing can essentially buy Content as a Service. It’s a great model, but freelancers often lack the business skills to maximize their earning potential. This blog solves that issue.

In the same vein as Growth Hackers, Inbound.org isn’t technically a blog. It was co-founded by the fine folks at Moz and Hubspot, and has grown into a flourishing community of marketers sharing the best content they can find.

Intercom is a communication tool that businesses can use for customer service, marketing, product development and more. As marketing continues to permeate every nook and cranny of modern business, all communication becomes a customer acquisition opportunity. Read all about it here.

This blog leans more toward entrepreneurship and startup life than strict marketing, but it’s too good not to include. Learn what the co-founder of Buffer is thinking, and get an idea of what life is like as the head of a rapidly growing startup.

The Mack Web Solutions blog is a breath of fresh air in the noisy world of blogging. This blog (and company) focuses on community building, which means there is no fluff. If it’s not useful, you won’t find it on this blog. (Read our interview with founder and CEO Mackenzie Fogelson here.)

Even though Marketing Land is probably the biggest news and media site for marketers, it’s loaded with useful tips, guides, interviews and columns. Danny Sullivan‘s dry wit alone is reason enough to add this site to your RSS reader.

Automation and data are the two overriding themes of the Marketo blog. With a healthy emphasis on email, this blog gets at the heart of modern marketing. Automation will continue to be more important in marketing, so start digging in now.

Since journalism and marketing are converging at an alarming rate, it’s worth seeing what you can learn from journalists. Run by Harvard University, the Nieman Journalism Lab explores “how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age.” Their goals are essentially the same as yours, so pay attention to this one.

Darren Rowse is equally famous for his work on Digital Photography School and ProBlogger. Basically, the guy understands how to build massive audiences. If you are relatively new to content marketing, this is a great place to start.

Do you know why Neil Patel’s Quick Sprout blog is worth reading? Because he is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. You might say he has earned some street cred. His experience means that his posts are without peer. Just check out The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking to see what we mean.

Search Engine Land, the sister site of Marketing Land, has a keen focus on the search-engine marketing landscape. They cover all the interesting news from Google, Bing and others but also provide plenty of tips and analyses for marketers.

He’s the father of permission marketing, and his blog is usually the most enlightening thing you will read each morning. If anyone can help you think outside the box and move outside your marketing comfort zone, it’s Seth Godin.

The Simply Measured software provides all the social data you can handle, and their blog covers all things social media analytics. They dig deep on topics like Vine analytics, keyword targeting and Big Data.

This blog is a great example of thought leadership. Sparksheet tackles the tough questions facing marketers, ponders what the future will look like and publishes sharp analyses from some of the world’s smartest media minds.

If you love data visualizations as much as I do, you are going to love this blog. Google has access to insane amounts of data, which it uses to create really interesting resources for marketers. March Madness: A Full Court Press for Marketers is a perfect example of what to expect here.

Lee Odden has been blogging about online marketing since the Google Florida update. (I’d never heard of it either; it happened in 2003.) He’s built up impressive reservoir of content and a great community over the past 11 years. The new stuff is great, and the old stuff is worth checking out too.

Just like Buffer, Unbounce provides two resources for marketing. The first is their main blog, which covers landing pages, A/B testing and conversion testing. The second – Inside Unbounce – is an inside look at the company. They share tales of their growth along with data from their customer support and marketing teams.

Conversion optimization is a data-driven practice. For this reason, the Visual Website Optimization blog contains tons of real-world examples of how A/B testing has triggered explosive increases in sales and growth.

Video marketing is often neglected by startup marketers because of the high cost of professional video. The Wistia blog, however, explains why video is worth the investment and offers tips on video best practices. One of our favorites: Should You Embed Video in Email?

Blog posts are helpful, but sometimes interviews are exactly what you need to get moving on your next big idea. The folks at WP Curve have interviewed 63 entrepreneurs as part of their Startup Chat series. Not sure where to start? Check out #61 with Noah Kagan.

The RSS feed does not work! Please get a technical person to resolve, thank you.

http://www.jimmydaly.com/ Jimmy Daly

@matthew_j_bailey:disqus It’s fixed. see instructions above.

Matthew J. Bailey

Got it now, thank you.

http://blog.wishpond.com Cara Tarbaj

Awesome list. But you forgot blog.wishpond.com ;)

Rob Neppell

Hmmm. As of 4:24 pm PT on 4/9 the OPML file still isn’t working as a Feedly import for me. Go through the import, page refreshes and nothing seems to have been added. IsItBrokenOrJustMe?

http://www.jimmydaly.com/ Jimmy Daly

Not sure what’s up since others are having success. I reached out to Feedly, I will let you know when I hear back.

Rob Neppell

Aha…it’s just me. I was right-clicking and Save-As’ing the link above, which *does* give you an XML file. But what (obviously) needs to be done is to click through, get to the Dropbox file page, and then download the file. Did that and worked like a charm. Important safety tip.

If I have to rank honesty a blog, who’s getting his momentum I will definitely choose Matthew Woodward’s Blog. It pure quality!

http://www.7eyetechnologies.com/ Kristina Roy

Thanks Jimmy, It is “All In One” list for me. Some blogs are new for me. Nice list.

Dave Bruns

Very nice list. Love that Annielytics is at the top :) There’s a small typo (repetition) here under hubspot – Here’s how seriously HubSpot takes content marketing: They hired rock-star journalist: They hired rock star journalist…

Obviously they do. Anyhow so do the overall population and the blogger himself. The overall population misses out on the advantageous dialog that can originate from online journal remarks .It not spam keyword…..purchase email ilst

Great list, Jimmy! Would you consider us for your next update of this list? We’re relatively new but are living out our mission to bring great narrative around stories of marketing and branding strategy. Email us if you need to get in contact: editor@strategistmag.com. Thanks!

Perhaps also http://www.shapingmarkets.org – a brand new blog about market creation and customer experience design that has received lots of syndication by HuffPost, Marketing Magazine, and FastCompany

HI Jimmy great list I got some leads on some great blogs I haven’t seen yet. I would however, ask that you check out mine Perfect Marketing Equation. http://www.perfectmarketingequation.com Happy Holidays! Tammy